New renormalization group results for scaling of self-avoiding tethered membranes Original Research Article

The scaling properties of self-avoiding polymerized two-dimensional membranes are studied via renormalization group methods based on a multilocal operator product expansion. The renormalization group functions are calculated to second order. This yields the scaling exponent ν to order ε2 Our extrapolations for ν agree with the Gaussian variational estimate for large space dimension d and are close to the Flory estimate for d = 3. The interplay between self-avoidance and rigidity at small d is briefly discussed.